John shrugged. “She’s got the money to hire people to do everything she’s doing now, but that would take away the part of work she needs—the fact she can start a job and get it done. She’s overloading her schedule, but not as bad as I’ve seen her do it in the past. Busyness isn’t the problem. Feeling like she has no control in her life—that’s a dark line I don’t want to see her walk again.”
“How bad did it get?”
John shook his head. “Not going to answer that one, even if you end up her husband.”
“You’re asking me to step into a role where I could badly hurt her because I don’t know those answers.”
“Yes, I am. You’ll find a way to deal with it.”
“I don’t seem to have much choice. Neither you nor Ellie are inclined to say very much.”
“Maybe because we know the truth and don’t want to scare you off.”
Bryce heard the humor along with the caution. It wasn’t as bad as he could imagine, but it was not good. “Charlotte’s going to tell me even less than either of you.”
“She doesn’t talk about it,” John agreed. “I don’t expect she ever will.”
Bryce glanced at the time. “I’ll take that hour and go find her. You’ve got keys to the truck?”
John patted his shirt pocket. “I’m set.”
Charlotte had left the admin building. Bryce found her at Shadow Lake, walking along its edge, tossing the occasional rock into the water while the two Irish setters explored what had washed up to the shoreline.
“Mind if I walk with you?”
“No.”
“I’ve got an hour while John hauls the pallets to the truck.” He slid the work gloves he’d been using back on and accepted a fish carcass one of the dogs brought back to Charlotte. “Smells good, huh?” He ruffled the dog’s ears, pitched the fish far into the lake. Charlotte skipped a rock across the splash where it landed.
Bryce thought she looked very tired. He’d postpone this conversation, but she was still going to be thinking about it. “You need to make a decision about the money that thirty years from now you can still live with.”
“Yes.”
“If you say no to the money, I want you comfortable with your decision. I don’t want you saying no because you’re afraid to say yes.”
She studied him, finally nodded. “An interesting way to put it. I’ll agree with the premise.”
“So we need an agreement, you and I. I want you to consider marrying me. I want a serious conversation about the possibility of you saying yes.”
“Bryce, this wasn’t why I told you about the will condition.”
“I got that.”
She pushed her hands into her pockets. “I need to know why you decided to ask.”
“You need a choice. By your own words, it was marry John or say no, and you settled on no. But John, by definition of who he is in your life, in Ellie’s life, wasn’t actually a choice. I am a choice. I don’t have major strikes that say I wouldn’t be a good husband for you.”
“You’re making a sacrificial gesture to give me a choice.”
“I was thinking more along the lines of interesting lady, a bit dangerous but interesting, and I could see you as my wife. I haven’t been able to say that about a woman before. I offered because if you want the money, you have to get married, and I’m a safe choice. I’d be a good husband.”
“The way you said that, you see it as an objective to be met—be a good husband to Charlotte.”
“You would prefer I be a bad one?”
She half laughed and kept walking, shook her head. “Good one.”
She glanced over at him. “I’ve already made the decision. I’m not getting married.”
“Then the conversation will simply make you more comfortable with that decision. I have no wish to pressure you into changing your mind. But I do want you to clearly see the options you have. I am an option.”
Bryce stopped walking, and she paused too, though she kept her attention on the dogs rather than look at him. Bryce smiled, easily reading her discomfort with this conversation, but relieved to see she was carefully listening to his words as well. “Charlotte, it’s a lot of money. If you don’t honestly and seriously consider saying yes, you are one day going to look back on this time with regret, and I don’t want that for you. I sincerely don’t.”
“I believe you mean that.” She finally turned to look over at him. “Purely as a hypothetical, wouldn’t it bother God that you’re a strong believer and I’m at best a messed-up one?”
Her question surprised him, that the issue was one of her first concerns. “God asks me to marry within my faith. You told me early on you consider yourself a struggling Christian. If I didn’t understand why you struggled, I would have a problem. But I do understand. Messed up is a far distance from having rejected the faith. That’s where my line in the sand is. You haven’t rejected God, you don’t disrespect the faith. You struggle. You may struggle all your life. It makes me sad for you, but it’s not a reason for us not to marry.”
He tugged off the gloves. “Charlotte, you’re going to be fine, we both will, whatever you decide. I want the decision you are comfortable with regarding the money. That’s the first decision. Because the money and the proposal don’t have to stay linked,” he pointed out. “There’s nothing that says I can’t ask you again three years and a day after his death. We keep talking, Charlotte. That’s what I want from you right now. I don’t know where this goes, but I want to find out. Take the risk and give me that.”
She finally nodded. “Okay, Bryce. We’ll continue the conversation.”
Charlotte set silverware and napkins on the table, brought over the pitcher to fill the water glasses. “If I say yes, someone eventually finds out I’m very wealthy and I’m a public figure again, not for something that happened in the past but for the ongoing present. I’m stalked by paparazzi everywhere I go because I’m now one of the wealthiest women in the country.”
Bryce pulled out the glazed ham, slid the pumpkin pie into the oven in its place, and wondered why he’d tried to be so ambitious with the meal. “Not the wealthiest, not even top ten.”
“In the top twenty-five.”
“We should be able to quickly give enough away that you drop way down to the top fifty.”
She leaned against the counter and reached for one of the extra marshmallows he hadn’t needed for the top of the sweet potatoes. “I’m being serious, Bryce.”
“I know you are.” He handed her the bag of marshmallows. “You’re doing okay giving away the sixty million. Having a lot more to give away isn’t going to faze you after a while. The public attention is the real reason you don’t want to accept the burden of this.”
She nodded. “I can put up with nearly all the rest of it, but the press and public attention—I lived through that once, Bryce. Its intensity mentally destroyed me. I felt like I was having to hide from the world those first months after I was found. Like I was a prisoner again. If John hadn’t been around, carving out some safe places and the freedom to breathe in those days, I’d be a recluse today. As it was, I still came close to tipping past that line. I don’t want to go back to that. I don’t want to go back to feeling trapped, having to watch out for the press, and being nervous about everyone who comes up to me.”
“Wealth buys privacy.”
“But by doing so it implicitly confirms the wealth is there—the private estate, the secure building, the security presence. I don’t want footprints to our lives indicating the wealth is there. The cars we drive, the places we stay, the things we own—they say something about us to others. I need it kept a secret. For us to never appear wealthy. ”
He glanced over at her. She’d said us. It was progress, and he’d take any small movement he could get. “I need a job, Charlotte.”
“What do you mean?”
“A cover. I need a job in philanthropy, where I can gather information we need to make giving decisions without my inquir
ies and interest in any way implying we’re the source of the funds. Maybe something with an existing foundation.”
“An interesting idea.”
“Worth thinking about.”
He decided the corn was done and turned the burner to low. He took the sweet potatoes out of the oven. “The risk of the wealth becoming public comes from a few different places. Someone at the law firm reveals the information and your name. Intentional or not, that could easily happen. Or we make a mistake. Someone realizes a pattern of donations traces back to us and starts to ask questions about how much money we’ve been giving away and where the money’s coming from. Given the amount to be given away, it’s not only possible, but probable, someone eventually realizes we’re giving away a lot of money. Also possible, we inadvertently tell someone who doesn’t keep the secret. Remote, but could happen—someone puts together the information based on what’s out there in the public record.”
She grew more still as he finished his list. “The information is going to eventually get into the public domain.”
He nodded. “For purposes of your decision, you have to assume it will.”
Bryce accepted the plate she handed him, stepped back so she could fill her plate first. “We can keep the fact of the wealth a secret for decades if we’re fortunate. I have no desire to have money change who I am—what I drive, what I wear, where I live. I like my life, and I’ve earned the right to keep it. The money’s not going to be obvious to people. But it’s a random variable. The question is, are you comfortable with the contingency plan. If you can live with the contingency plan, it’s a manageable problem.”
“I see your point.”
He slid two slices of ham onto his plate. “If it became public, we would use the wealth to buy us privacy. A nice-size home and grounds with good security. We’d add more security around my family. We’d hire staff to do the public errands and other miscellaneous tasks we used to do. Church would get tricky, and other public venues, but we’d manage the problem.”
Charlotte pulled out a chair at the table. “If it were just me, I would change my name again, my appearance. I’d disappear and start over. It’s the safe route.”
“The escape.”
“Yes. It’s when someone puts together Ruth Bazoni and one of the wealthiest women in America that it gets really bad.”
“You have to make your decision assuming that will happen.” He brought over the fruit plate before he took his seat. “If it got horrible, Charlotte, I could see slipping you and Ellie out the back door for a vacation away from it. But once the wealth is publicly known, that cap never goes back on the bottle. The contingency would be to manage the situation.”
“It’s the reason I keep landing on no.” She tried the sweet potatoes. “The weight of how the money changes every day of the rest of my life is the other reason for a no. Talk to me about the money. What’s the plan?”
Bryce cleared the table, feeling like the conversation was spinning off into circles. He could understand why Charlotte had settled on no as the right answer, because the more they talked, the more complicated the problem of the money became. He’d change the subject to give them a break, but this first evening of conversation was too critical. If this evening ended with the impression saying no was the only safe choice, he was going to have an uphill battle trying to reverse it for the rest of the days until the deadline.
He brought over ice cream with strawberries since the pie still wasn’t done. “Charlotte, if we’re married, what do you want? In the simplest terms you can, let’s start over with that question. I’ll tell you the same. Give me a picture of what you want.”
She pushed around the strawberries with her spoon. “You’ll think it’s silly.”
He smiled. To get something she thought was silly also made it something true at a deep level. He’d been struggling all evening to get that out of her. “Try me.”
“I want you to keep cash in my pocket, pay my credit card bill, and remember my birthday with a nice meal out somewhere. The money is your problem. We can talk about it, but I don’t want to be pulled into the decisions, the plans, the weight of it.”
He felt them turn the first corner toward an understanding. “A good and reasonable picture,” he said softly.
“What’s yours?”
“I want your shoes dropped in the hallway and your sketchbook on the coffee table and the clutter of you trying to cook in the kitchen. I want you to live with me and become comfortable with me. I want us to live in Chicago if it’s possible, this house for now. If the press becomes a problem, we’ll move, but stay in the area because of my family.”
“I like your home, love the backyard, but Chicago is a risk.”
“We’ll deal with the risk. I want you to accept John’s decisions on security. If he wants someone with you when you’re here, when you’re traveling—you can fuss about it all you want, but you stay within his lines.”
She lifted her spoon and pointed it at him. “His security, his thoughts on it, you don’t meddle and make it tighter because you’re more worried than he is about something. And it goes both ways. He wants someone on you, you live with it.”
Bryce nodded. “He’s going to have someone stuck on us both if the news about the money ever becomes public.”
“He will, and not give either one of us a choice. I’ve already lived with that. You’re going to find it an experience.”
“I’ll adapt.”
She thought while she ate her ice cream. “I’d want to give Shadow Lake and the family land to John, enough money to manage it so the land can stay undeveloped. I’d remodel Fred’s place and give it to Ellie. It will give her a home near John, and it would be good for her to have a place out of the city. I’d sell the Silverton house.”
“Anything that puts Ellie more in John’s orbit, the better.”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
Bryce weighed the risk and decided to see how far she’d take the picture. “I want you to let me decide how much is appropriate to give your sister, your brother-in-law, their girls, and when. What else we give John and Ellie, how and when. I’ll do my best to keep peace in your world regarding the money, but you let me deal with the dynamics of it. You simply say, ‘Talk to Bishop.’”
“Thank you.”
“It’s the one problem I believe I’ve got the skills to handle for you.”
“You also give generously to your own family and friends; you accept it’s your money as much as it is mine. Without the marriage there’s none of it for either of us, and marriage is two people, two worlds of family and friends. You carry the burden of it, you carry the nice parts of it too.”
He nodded, pleased not only with the perspective she had but that she was willing to follow his lead and fill in more of the picture of what might work. It was a long way from a decision, but the picture was a useful step to reaching that decision. “We’ll tell the family there’s some money,” he said, “as they already know about the coins I’m selling for you. But we’ll leave the impression it’s in the millions. No one ever needs to know it starts with a b.”
Charlotte was toying with her ice cream. Bryce pushed back his chair. “Let’s shift this to the living room. Find your sketchbook, and I’ll bring in more coffee.”
“I don’t want people to know it’s not a normal marriage.”
Bryce put the ball game on pause. “It will be a normal marriage.”
Charlotte set aside her sketchbook. “We won’t be sleeping together.”
“That’s something that will make for some interesting conversations between us, but it will be none of anyone else’s business.”
He couldn’t read her expression, and he felt like he was stepping into quicksand. “It’s our marriage. We’ll do what makes sense to the two of us, and we’ll reach those decisions with some kindness and patience behind the conversations. All I’m expecting out of marriage is what we have now plus another layer of more of the same—a friendship,
we live together, and we figure out how to handle Fred’s estate in a way that makes sense to us. To the outside world, family and friends, it’s going to look like a content and happy marriage because that’s actually what it’s going to be.”
She got to her feet. Before she could start pacing, he reached for her hand to stop her. He stood, settled his arms around her, and linked them loosely behind her back. “Charlotte, listen. I’m not making any statements that imply I’m not interested in kissing you, holding you, and spending the night with you. I’d like all those things. But it’s not a destination you’re promising me or that I’m counting on to go with the fact we have a wedding. It’s simply an assumption on my part that fifty years is a long time, and we might flow from being friends to something more if that happens to be the shift we both want someday. It’s not an expectation. I’m going to honor what you want. You have my word that marriage isn’t going to change your freedom to decide.”
“It’s going to be awkward in public.”
“Not so awkward,” he reassured. “There will be lines you can depend on me to honor. I won’t kiss you in public unless you give me the sign it’s okay for me to do so. Something simple between us. You can spin your ring around. Someone teases us to kiss under the mistletoe, you’re going to get a hug and whisper that will probably make you blush, but I won’t kiss you unless you clear it first.
“I’m going to reach for your hand, because I like holding hands with you. I’ll put my arm around you and share your space, occasionally hug you, not unlike this. My family and friends are going to see that. They’ll see the affection, because that is easy to share. I’m marrying you because I want to, because I care about you, because I asked you to marry me, and you said yes. I would be proud to have you as my wife, and people are going to clearly see that.”
“I don’t deserve that cover.”
“You’ll have it, Charlotte. We’ll be friends, good friends, but I’ll also be a good husband to you. I’ll protect your privacy, protect what is between us.”
He leaned back just enough to see her face. “Charlotte, a promise. I will never say the words ‘I love you’ in public before I’ve said them to you in private. And I’ll never say them to you in private until I can say them from the bottom of my heart. That day comes, I want you to believe me. I will not say the words lightly. But I’m not going to be pressuring you to move beyond where you are comfortable with me.
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